Interesting brass find

[vancelw]

Was digging a post hole today and found what I first thought was a piece of .308 brass.

Further inspection revealed a 7.92x57 Mauser headstamp.

I live on an old WW II training camp. Close combat training was conducted in this area. Lots of sand mounds and 84 year old foxholes in the woods. Usually brass i find is lake city .30-'06

1942 | 26L | 79 | FS

[vancelw]

If my identification is incorrect, someone please enlighten me!

[ywaltzucanrknrl]

That's interesting, sure makes a person wonder how it ended up there.

Is this Texas or Montana?

[4t5]

Vance,
Check out the #9 post
https://forum.afte.org/index.php?topic=1367.0

[AJMD429]

.
Looks like you could polish it up a bit with that new-fangled ceramic media and get a few more loads outta it...

Might it be that 'way back when' they were training there they would have had some 98 Mausers in that chambering...? Or maybe they allowed soldiers to use the base for hunting or other shooting in the post-war years prior to it being shut down.

[samsi]

The Doc brings up an interesting possibility. I knew an old gent who'd been the HazMat inspector at Fort Huachuca. He said that while exploring the far reaches of the base making his rounds, he discovered a side canyon that had evidently been an unofficial shooting spot. The ground was covered with old brass and I don't remember everything he rattled off, but there was 30-40 Krag, 44-40 and 41 Colt!

He also said that the base museum had some pristine Winchesters in storage that he was allowed to handle - with white gloves.

[marlinman93]

That marking would be the 8x57 Mauser cartridge.

[vancelw]

That's interesting, sure makes a person wonder how it ended up there.

Is this Texas or Montana?

NE Texas.
Almost every county in N, NE, or E Texas had a military training or POW camp in WW II. Camp Maxey was both.

There used to be a fake German town on the camp somewhere. It's about 14000 acres now. Used to be much much larger. 70,000 acres.

It's always possible a hunter dropped this, but I doubt it.
The brittleness and color lead me to believe it had been under ground for 80+ years.
I figured they used captured German rifles and machine guns to train the troops. Get them familiar with the sound.

I have small piles of .30-'06 brass (mostly rotted back to the shoulder) and .30 cal projectiles.

No tree on my place is over 95 years old.

Camp Maxey - Wikipedia https://share.google/Ny6SkFGT53vK0P4Q1

[JB]

Instead of "26L" ,I believe it's "TOC" That's Turkish 8mm military ammo. That stuff was dirt cheap once along with the imported Turkish rifles. I may still have a bandoleer of it someplace in my garage.

[Bruce Scott]

Instead of "26L" ,I believe it's "TOC" That's Turkish 8mm military ammo. That stuff was dirt cheap once along with the imported Turkish rifles. I may still have a bandoleer of it someplace in my garage.

Definitely Turkish. Between the 'T' and the 'C' (which stands for Türkiye Cumhuriyeti and translates to the Republic of Turkey) is not an 'O' but a star and crescent, Turkey's national symbol.



Info and photo from the discussion here: https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t ... lp/23810/2

[jkbrea]

I remember in '84 stationed in W. Germany, we were training in Wildflecken. Saw several old l bomb craters from WW2. We weren't supposed to dig foxholes but weather got crappy. So out came the entrenching tool to trench around our tents, shelter halves. Found a few rusted out Garand clips. It was a weird feeling standing where US soldiers did 40 yrs prior fighting our current ally.

[vancelw]

It's still a weird feeling when I'm sitting in my deer stand and hear full auto fire coming from across the road

I'm pretty sure y'all are correct on the Turkish headstamp.
I've got the casing sitting in vinegar to see if i can loosen that crud and see that headstamp better.

[jeepnik]

Mid 70's the USAF was widening the entrance to one of it's German bases (Ramstein?). Civil Engineers hit a hunk of concrete. Gi's being GI's they excavated it without passing the info up the line. They uncovered a WWI German bunker. They thought about going inside, but one of the guys remembered what his dad had said about such bunkers being booby trapped. They finally told their command about it. EOD came out took one look and blew it in place. Thirty year old booby traps are either going to be duds or so darned touchy they'll go off just walking by.

On another front, I was working a multiple prison construction job, in the early 2000's, at the first base I was stationed at in the early 70's. When I ask the guys what they did about the bunkers they looked at me as if I had two heads. They had no idea that the area they were building in what had been the ammo dump since the base opened pre WWII. You guessed it, a bit later they started finding them. Empty fortunately.

[vancelw]

Ok. I let it sit in the vinegar too long but it worked.
Blacked it out with a sharpie and wiped it off.
Y'all were 100% correct on the Turkish headstamp. Weird how that looked like 26L